Pinball Arcade – Table Pack 1

Developer: FarSight Studios | Publisher: FarSight Studios | Release Date: 2013 | Genre: Pinball / Simulation | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

The first Pinball Arcade table pack offers two new tables for players looking for a challenge after mastering the free table and core pack. Included in the pack are two Midway tables, The Machine: Bride of Pin Bot as well as Medieval Madness. Both tables have been faithfully recreated in digital form and make a fine addition to the Pinball Arcade lineup. Let’s take a look at the tables individually to see what they have to offer.

The Machine: Bride of Pin Bot

The Machine: Bride of Pin Bot is a table from 1991 and is actually a “sequel” to the Pin Bot table from 1986. It is a pretty straightforward table with two flippers and two ramps and is also quite open as most of the action takes place on the upper playing field. The goal of the table is to activate the voice circuit and vision of the bride before triggering a metamorphosis that transforms her into a human.

Achieving the goals on this table is actually very easy as it mostly involves shooting the ball into the holes in the rotating head of the bride. So to activate her voice circuit you need to shoot the ball into her mouth while for vision you have to shoot a ball into each one of her eye sockets. There is a small pachinko style section on the upper right of the table, but the really big scores come from the billion point shots.

Spinning the smaller wheel awards you with points and extra balls, but if you are lucky and spin the big wheel it might just land on the billion point shot. In this mode, you have twelve seconds to shoot the ball up the heart lane and score a whopping one billion points. There is some luck involved as the wheel selection is random, but the game has so many opportunities for extra balls that you can have quite a few goes at the billion during one game. It is obviously quite a rush, especially for casual players to make the shot and score big, but it also means that normally scoring on the table feels a bit pointless. Don’t get me wrong, it is an addictive table, but constantly trying to activate the billion point shot can make it feel like a bit of a grind.

The table artwork is very nice and the backbox is beautiful as well, making this a very attractive looking table. There are also tons of speech samples for the bride and Pin Bot chimes in a few times as well. I quite liked the music as well, which although not very memorable does fit the table theme. Triggering the transformation actually causes the bride to start singing, which is novel to say the least.

The Machine: Bride of Pin Bot is a table that will be a lot of fun to play for casual players. Experienced players that can consistently beat the table goals may find it to be a bit too shallow after a while, but it is still a great table to play every once in a while.

Medieval Madness

The second table in the pack is Medieval Madness, a well known machine from 1997. This table is considered to be amongst the best by many players and you don’t have to play for very long to find out why. Medieval Madness mixes a great layout with clear goals and plenty of humor to provide quite an entertaining experience. The goal of the table is to destroy six castles, owned by the mad King of Payne and his six men. Along the way you will also have to embark on missions to obtain six coveted titles.

This table is dominated by a castle on the upper half and your goal is to destroy it by lowering the drawbridge and destroying the gate. Destroying a castle actually causes the towers to smash into each other which is quite an impressive looking effect. Although the focus is on the castle, there are plenty of other interesting things to look out for on this feature packed table. Trolls pop up from the playing field and have to be bashed into submission, a large plastic dragon menaces the right ramp and a hole on the left of the table serves as a catapult for launching the ball at the castle. Considering how much action takes place on this table I can only imagine the type of beating that the real tables must take.

The table artwork is also very nice, with a large shield depicting the six castles that you have to topple covering most of the lower area. During the game you have bash trolls that pop up out of the playing field, defend a damsel in distress, stir up some peasants, engage in a spot of jousting and of course master the catapult. All of these actions are accompanied by some very Monty Python-esque humor and speech snippets.  The damsel in distress is voiced by Tina Fey no less and even the music is very fitting for this madcap table.

Overall the reputation that Medieval Madness has for being a great table is well deserved and captured perfectly with this digital version. It is definitely one of the tables that you will find yourself returning to again and again, no matter how large your collection grows. I thoroughly enjoyed both tables in this first pack and can recommend it to anyone that loves pinball and are wondering if they should grab this pack or not.

*Review originally published April 2014.